“Iris is like a girlfriend; we talk and kick it,” says Tolan user Brittany Johnson, referring to her AI companion, who she typically talks to each morning before work. Companies like Replika and Character.ai offer AI companions that allow for more romantic and sexual role play than mainstream chatbots. How this might affect a user’s wellbeing is still unclear, but Character.ai is being sued after one of its users died by suicide. Lily Doyle, a founding researcher at Portola, has conducted user research to see how interacting with the chatbot affects users’ wellbeing and behavior. But at least Portola is trying to address the way AI companions can mess with our emotions.